A Dagger at Efate and an Equipment Upgrade

Hello Patrons!

My latest RPG review is done and up for you to get an early look at. It's covering the Traveller adventure A Dagger at Efate, which is just over 3 pages long, but I managed to squeeze 17 minutes talking about. I plan to post it public on Friday.

With luck, this should be the last video I make using my home-grown teleprompter setup, which is really Power Point slides on an ancient laptop placed directly beneath the camera. While it has served me well these past 5 years, the setup of trying to read the notes while also trying to look into the camera means that I make a thousand mistakes, go off script constantly with rambling improv, and am clearly not looking at the camera. The laptop itself has a massive screen, which is good, but is only useful for this one job, and is beginning to fully crap out (It was made for Windows 7, if you want a better idea of what I mean by ancient. The battery died long ago and it must be plugged in to operate).

So I've spent the last few weeks investing in a real teleprompter. This was supposed to have been a quick and easy fix, but as with all things technological, I hit a few snags. The unit is big. I wanted it to be around for a while and not need an upgrade again for a long time. That required a new heavy-duty tripod to replace my flimsy $15 tripod. The teleprompter works by laying a tablet in the tray below the mirror in front of the camera. Problem is I don't own a tablet. I have a 2-in-1 laptop, which everything said would work, and it does fit perfectly. But then the real problem of software happened. 99% of the software for teleprompters is for Android or IOS, meaning my Windows-run laptop-tablet hybrid was limited to a small selection of programs that either cost hundreds of dollars, sucked terribly, or just assumed I'd have a separate teleprompter operator running it for me. Then there came remote controls, or lack thereof for Windows-based teleprompter programs. They do exist, but stink. My main options were a full-sized wireless mouse with special keyboard features or foot pedals with limited control (anyone that's seen me try to dance knows that I have zero foot dexterity). Long story short, my new tablet is on the way. 

Once it's all here and I know it's properly working, I'll send you all pictures or a video of it. It'll take some getting used to and require a learning-curve, but I think this will be a vast improvement overall. For Gang skits, where I have multiple characters talking back and forth, I'll still have to use the old ways of scripting, but the main video portions of me talking should go a whole lot smoother and look a lot better. I could only have done this with your support. So thank you.

I'd planned for this to be the first video with the new setup, but that wasn't the case. Hopefully it'll be the last with the old one.

While I'm on the topic of upgrading equipment, is my audio degrading? I'm terrible at judging sound-quality, but the last couple videos feel like my mic might be off. I can't say for sure that it's not in my head, but if it sounds worse in this and the last couple videos, let me know. 

Thank you and have a great day,

~Seth